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RAF Lockheed P-2 Neptune

The AEO in my crew on Victor tankers had been a Signaller on Neptunes in his early days. He had an usual logbook entry - a three day flight! The aircraft took off at 2345 and landed at 0015 the day after next - 24.30, covering three dates.

Nearly a half of all awards of the George Medal to date have been to service personnel (c. 850), so Crabb's award is not particularly unusual. Not sure if he was RN or RNVR but the latter were certainly not classified as civilians. The George Cross is an extremely scarce decoration (also awarded to both service and civilian recipients). It ranks immediately below the Victoria Cross, so conditions for its award are particularly stringent and presumably Crabb did not meet the criteria for the higher award.

Incidentally we had a station commander at Marham with the George Medal, Gp Capt Vic McNabney. He had won it as a Flying Officer when attempting to rescue a glider pilot who had crashed into a waterfall.

The record established by CDR Tom Davies and the crew of the Truculent Turtle stood for decades. The distance record for all aircraft was broken in 1962 by a jet-powered B-52. The Truculent Turtleís record for piston/propeller driven aircraft was broken by Burt Rutanís Voyager, a carbon-fiber aircraft, which made its historic around the world non-stop flight in 1986... more than 40 years after the Turtle landed in Columbus, Ohio.

The George Cross is an extremely scarce decoration (also awarded to both service and civilian recipients). It ranks immediately below the Victoria Cross, so conditions for its award are particularly stringent and presumably Crabb did not meet the criteria for the higher award.

GC and VC are equally-ranked, I understand. The VC is for actions directly in the face of the enemy, GC (if awarded for a military action) where the enemy are not present.

I understand the P2V-5F variant had a pair of J34 jets mounted on the wings ... which apparently had a common fuel system with the R-3350-32W piston engines ... so they ran on AvGas. How does that work

The P2V's with the jets ran them on avgas and still do. Originally 145 Octane but now 100LL. There is a tanker operator near here in Missoula MT., Neptune Aviation, that has several and they work just fine.

A C130 will also run on a mix of jet fuel and avgas if jet fuel is not available. the temperatures go up a bit and the range goes down. Or, as Canadian C130Flight Engineer once told me, we can run on anything other than TCP!!! Tom Cat Pee!!

The other example of a jet engine burning AvGas is the Viper 203 fitted to the Shackleton MkIII, although the run times were limited and after 30 hours at full throttle they were removed for some serious fixing!

I did not fly an Shackletons but Neptuns, a number of friends flew in both and all preferred the Neptune

Neptuneís came to be supplied to the RAF because we had MR Lancasterís with H2s radar and not much else in Coastal Command and the US said there were not good enough for the cold war,

I flow in the MR Lancasterís at ST Morgan and operated the H2S radar and also in Neptuneís at RAF Kinloss an RAF Toppclife operating the an/aps20 radar the Americans were right the aps20 was by far better radar .the Neptune was also equipped with additional equipment that the Lancaster lacked, electronic counter measures equipment, sonic equipment, magnetic anomaly detection gear, etc.

The Neptune had crew comfort in mind, sound proofing padding, two bunk beds , a cooker and ash trays if needed

I have a copy of P2V In Action (pub Squadron Signal No.68) and Page 29, shows a photo of P-2V s/n 51-15956 destined for UK albeit in ferry and US markings still.

I was not aware that the batches we had under the MDAP , had the MAD tailboom but just the early versions without or with turret? Came across this on a pictorial book of the RAF from the year dot to the 1970s

I was not aware that the batches we had under the MDAP, had the MAD tailboom but just the early versions without or with turret?The first batch of RAAF Neptunes for Australia in 1951 were P2V-5s (before the P2V-7s a decade later) and were in an early configuration similar to this, but not quite.

The first were what we referred to as the Mark 1: three gun turrets (nose, tail, mid upper), no tailboom, no jets. Later the nose guns were removed.